Q: How do you successfully bond multiple ethernet channels together to get better throughput from a server to a 100Mbit ethernet switch? (I have searched all over the place and there is some info at the Beowulf site (http://www.beowulf.org/software/bonding.html), but I can't seem to locate anyone who's successfully pulled this off and has it working.)

A: Ethernet channel bonding on Linux was indeed pioneered by Donald Becker and the Beowulf Project. Tom Davis makes available a set of the resulting (unofficial, unsupported) kernel patches at http://pdsf.nersc.gov/linux/ .

I've found some benchmarks here:

http://www.fos.su.se/compchem/jazz/bond.html

That in turn links back to the original Beowulf Project documentation page.

We have not had occasion to try the patch (gigabit ethernet is an attractive alternative), but reports suggest that it works OK.